when he asked. 'Far too important to eat with we mortals. So he takes Twinkie-type crap out to the Dark Side and broods, the god on Olympus. It will all sound ennobling in his autobiography.'
'Mickey Mouse?'
'Nickname.' Adams chewed. 'We call him that behind his back because he's pretentious. Not a bad guy, really, but the Saint Michael stuff gets a little old when you have to work with him. Although I will concede, he's the quintessential OAE.'
'OAE?'
'Old Antarctic Explorer. Decades of Ice Time.'
'Jim Sparco knows him,' Lewis said. 'Seems to admire him. Told me I should meet him.'
'Yes, you should. Mickey Moss built this base. He made it all possible, as he'll remind you at every opportunity. But Jim Sparco doesn't have to hear those tiresome reminders, like I do. Or compete with him for grant money, like Carl Mendoza does. Or put up with his bullying, like our dear ineffectual station manager Rod Cameron does. Or jump to his orders, like our G.A. s do.'
'Someone else used that. G.A., I mean.'
'General Assignment. Assistant. Grunt. Serf. Supporter. Except you never find one when you need one. They're the people who really run this place. It's like officers and noncoms. We outrank them in everything except what really counts.'
'I detect some worldly cynicism.'
'You detect polar realism. You've joined a family, Jed, and like all families ours has some history.'
'Am I going to regret it?'
'Not if you fit in.'
Lewis got some food, taking a tray and nodding at the cook. Pulaski was being helped by a plain but friendly woman named Linda Brown. She looked at the tiny helpings on his plate and laughed. 'First-night fast.' She patted her ample hips. 'Even I remember. Dimly.'
He took his meager meal and sat down. If Adams seemed a bit sour, the rest seemed to be laughing and joking. Everyone was exclaiming about the shipment of fresh food. Lettuce! Tangerines! There was a vigor to the group, a buzz of energy and camaraderie that Lewis found appealing. They were excited at the departure of the last plane, which marked the true start of winter. Yet there was also a social sorting as they ate, he noticed: four of the women together in apparent defense against male attention, other females mixed casually with the men; scientists tended to congregate at one table, maintenance personnel at another. Those at Lewis's table made jokes about his pallor. They remembered what arrival was like.
'When do I stop being the fingie?' he asked, knowing full well that no one newer was coming until October.
'When you're so cold that your face is beginning to frostbite, your balls have shriveled to peas, and your hands feel like shovels,' Carl Mendoza, an astronomer, told him.
'I think I've got an inside job.'
'I know what you do. Wait until you commute to work.'
'But you get acclimated, right?'
'You get frozen so many times you're incapable of thaw.' Mendoza pointed with his head. 'Like our Russian aurora expert.'
'What cold?' Alexi Molotov said, reaching for the butter.
'Or when you join the Three Hundred Degree Club,' said the medic, Nancy Hodge. She was in her late forties, a thin and once-pretty woman with the kind of lines that suggested she'd seen a little too much of life. Her welcoming smile had a twist to it. No ring, but a white mark where one had been.
'What's that?'
'You'll see.'
The others were excited about the fresh food, loud about their plans for the winter, and excited by the new responsibility of being cut off. Lewis picked at his own food but as he tired he realized he couldn't fully share the mood. He was exhausted from his journey, and in his weariness the crowd became cloying and the galley air hot and steamy. His appetite had deserted him and he couldn't concentrate. The plan after the meal, he was told, was to watch The Thing, a perennial Polar ritual.
'It is this American movie about an outer space being infecting the bodies of Polar scientists and killing them, one by one,' Molotov summarized with relish. 'It is very funny. They fight back with guns and flame throwers. Boom! Boom! Yet this'-he held up a butter knife- 'is as wicked as it gets at real Pole.' He laughed. 'Everywhere else in life your body is taken over, by bosses, by advertisers, by government, by nagging wife. Here, no.'
'Yet you watch it anyway.'
'It is, what you call it…' He made a squeezing motion on his arm with his fingers.
'Inoculation,' Nancy Hodge said.
'Yes! Yes! Inoculation against the fear. The scare of being left here, for the winter. You know? The veterans know all the lines by heart. You will see. It is lots of fun.'
But Lewis was so weary he felt in danger of falling into his plate of food. The thought of enduring a movie appalled him. After embarrassing himself twice with dull responses that made him sound like a half-wit, he finally excused himself to bed.
The others nodded without surprise. It took time.
'If you wake up and you are the last one left,' Molotov called after him, 'don't be surprised. Then you know the outer space being, the creature- it is you.'
CHAPTER THREE
Lewis's sleep was ragged, his body periodically jerking awake as he gasped for breath. Each time it did so he'd have to roll out of bed to urinate, ridding himself of bloat. By morning his soup can was full and his breathing was easier. He felt his body beginning to adjust, his red blood cells multiplying, but when he went to the galley all he wanted for breakfast was toast and coffee. The maintenance worker sitting next to him looked at his plate with disbelief.
'You'll starve on that bird feed.' The man shoved more food into his mouth, talking as he chewed. 'George Geller, G.A. I'm serious, you gotta eat more.'
Geller was consuming a four-egg ham and cheese omelet, hash browns, two steaks, a bowl of cereal, and three tumblers of orange juice. The gluttony renewed Lewis's nausea.
'How can you hold all that?'
'This? Hell, I still lose weight in the cold. You better have more than that, man. The Pole devours calories. You eat against it.'
Lewis put aside the last of his toast. 'Not today.'
Geller shrugged. 'You'll see.'
'I'm just not hungry.'
'You will be.'
Geller attacked his meal with a steady industry, like a steam shovel excavating a foundation. Lewis was half hypnotized by it. 'You came here for the food, then.'
The maintenance man broke his pace enough to smile. 'Pulaski ain't that good. I came here to get away from it all. So did everybody.'
'The urban stress of turn-of-the-millennium life?'
Geller speared a piece of steak. 'The Minnesota stress of a fucked-up marriage, nowhere job, and pressing debt. Same problems as the guys who went with Columbus.'
'I've got a Visa balance, too.'
'My creditors are a little heavier than that, man.' He chewed. 'Truth be told, this is the Betty Ford Clinic for me. Cold turkey from the track and cards. I had an affair with Lady Luck and the bitch dumped me, so these loan sharks who looked like the missing link came calling and said highly disturbing things about accumulating interest. Down here they can't reach me. I'll make enough this winter to start over.'
